At desert outposts, Border Patrol agents sift for clues

U.S. Border Patrol Agent Luis Colon Diaz patrols near the Mexican border in remote southern New Mexico, where the Border Patrol has established forward operating bases.

Photo: TODD HEISLER, STF

HIDALGO COUNTY, N.M. - A white pickup rumbled along the barbed-wire fence that divides the United States and Mexico, toward a crude gate, nicknamed Mingas, carved by drug smugglers to bring their supply across the border.

On U.S. soil, Daniel Algarate Martinez, a Border Patrol agent, gripped his rifle, staring at the truck as it approached on the Mexican side. A coyote howled in the distance. The truck, loaded with logs, raced past and kept on going.

"I wonder what he has under that wood," Algarate Martinez mumbled.

The path to the Mingas gate is a winding dirt trail of unpredictable dangers, brought by the desert, the remoteness and the illicit drug trade. It is on the eastern edge of the Bootheel in New Mexico's southwest corner, where the border juts down and Mexico stands briefly to America's east, one of the most remote spots in the roughly 2,000 miles where the countries intersect.

The closest Border Patrol station is about 60 miles away, an eternity in a region where most roads were cut by ranchers' tractors and herds of cattle.

The closest agents are much closer these days, though, stationed for days in outposts deep in the Chihuahuan desert, so close to Mexico that the lights of its farms are the often the only clear sign of human life.

The agents sleep in bunk beds, sharing meals in a communal kitchen next to lounges where TV sets are perennially tuned to ESPN. Water comes from wells. Storage tanks hold diesel fuel for the vehicles. Dormitories, command centers and holding cells occupy modular buildings encircled by floodlights and chain-link fences, a setup modeled after the military's forward-operating bases in Afghanistan.

Providing a presence

Ramiro Cordero, a special-operations supervisor for the Border Patrol's El Paso sector, which is responsible for 268 miles of borderland, including the Bootheel, said the bases were an essential element in the agency's quasi-military strategy of "gaining, maintaining and expanding." They provide a presence in isolated areas where building brick-and-mortar stations would have been impractical.

There are two of the outposts in New Mexico, on the eastern and western flanks of the Bootheel.

Camp Ramsey, where Algarate Martinez is sometimes stationed, opened in 2009. Camp Garza opened in November - the ripple effect of a rancher's killing in Arizona, most likely by a drug smuggler.

Though the number of apprehensions of illegal border crossers has been in steady decline, the number of drug seizures has remained constant all along the American Southwest, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office, justifying the Border Patrol's expansion into such remote areas. Arizona has five such forward-operating bases, with three more to open this year.

Number of detainees down

In the El Paso sector, the number of illegal-immigrant detainees fell to roughly 10,400 last year from 122,000 in 2006. Cordero said half of them were captured in the Bootheel region, where, unless a migrant got lost while trying to sneak into the United States through Arizona, the ones who get caught are likely to be carrying bundles of marijuana.

Four to six agents work each shift at Camp Ramsey: morning, swing and midnight. Each stays for five days and five nights, and each patrols alone, looking for signs of people where people are not expected to be.

Rain affects tracking

An agent working overnight captured two drug mules somewhere between the Mingas gate and Monument 40, an obelisk-shaped border marker so white it glows in the dark when the full moon is out. The shift's supervisor told the five agents reporting to work in the morning that two other mules had gotten away.

One of those agents, Luis Colon Diaz, who is 32 and from Puerto Rico, decided he would carry out his search on foot, in the hills behind an abandoned yellow house on the Victorio Ranch, a rambling property speckled with hideouts used by spotters for the drug gangs.

The trek covered roughly four miles in a circular pattern across a range of hills. It had rained hard overnight, which was both bad and good: bad because it might have washed away footprints, and good because new footprints would be easy to spot on the moist ground.

The first out-of-place thing Colon Diaz found was a water bottle, which still had beads of water inside. "Fresh," he said. He adjusted the shoulder strap on his shotgun, as if to make sure the weapon was still there.

Colon Diaz holds a degree in anthropology from the University of Colorado, Denver, where he once wrote a paper comparing the digestive systems of cows and howler monkeys.

On top of some rocks at the crest of a hill, he found a blue toothbrush. There was a bit of shade from a bush and a clear view of the American side of the border, as far as Interstate 10. Undeniably, he said, it was "a spotter's hangout."

Humans, or animals?

The radio crackled. Another agent moving in the area said, "Looks like there's one on one side of the water tank by the ravine and another guy on the other side."

Colon Diaz took his shotgun off his shoulder and held it at the ready as he made his way downhill, following an arroyo that led to the water tank.

"Animals," said the voice on the radio.

Distant sights are deceiving in the desert. Cows can seem like humans moving slowly through thorny brush.

Back at his truck, Colon Diaz unloaded his shotgun and drove to Camp Ramsey, the end of another shift.

In a busy urban area, he said, "an agent has minutes" to figure out where an illegal border-crosser is going and catch him before he gets away.

The Bootheel is so far from everything, he went on, "it's going to be hours, days, until these guys get anywhere. I've got time."